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In October 1960, young Xavier Macia looked out of a window of a DC-6B airliner as it refueled in Gander, N.L., and thought what a strange place his new home was.

From inside the warmth of the Canadian Pacific Airlines' Empress of Honolulu, Xavier and his family had left Barcelona, Spain, to build a new life in a country they knew so little about, his father based expectations on the 1936 Hollywood musical Rose Marie.

They looked forward to a land populated by "singing bar girls, lumberjacks, Indians and scarlet-jacketed Mounties."

To help kick off this travelling series on what our country looked like yesterday, and to ask whether our best year is behind us, I've reached out to a now-grown Xavier.

He's spent the last few years in Spain for work, and plans to return home to Canada.

We're of the same generation and grew up in the same Canada, but his outlook, perhaps similar to many immigrants, is slightly different than mine — but an equally important first chapter of this journey.

Xavier recalls sitting close beside his mother who was pregnant, peering out during that needed stop-over in Gander, to watch men in parkas working in snow to get the plane on its way to Montreal.

Before reaching what was then Canada's biggest city, their new country seemed bleak.

But by the time they set up a home in Montreal, they'd find a kind and warm country that was reaching new heights.

Many things, including the Canadians who came to their aid that first Christmas — when the owner and secretary of the architectural office the elder Macia worked at absconded with the wages — shaped their impressions.

The $20 given to the family helped Xavier's father pay bus fare to find a new job and build from there.

In 2006, his father died in Toronto, where the family moved after Montreal.

Xavier says the older man didn't feel nostalgic about his birth country, but rather shared in the national enthusiasm that came with living in Montreal during Expo 67.

But while frustrated with Canadian politics, and what he sees as a loss of influence around the world, Xavier believes we're a better country today.

"Canada is a wonderful place and I think that sometimes Canadians get hung up on issues that are, compared to what happens in other places, relatively petty," the 55-year-old father of two says. "Sometimes people do not realize what good fortune they have in living in such a place.

"Canada can be an even better place to live but that depends on working together in that spirit of compromise which, in my opinion, is what makes it work."

From that plane window, a young Xavier Macia thought Canada of the day wasn't what they hoped for.

A different world: An immigrant Canadian says the country is getting better every year

In October 1960, young Xavier Macia looked out of a window of a DC-6B airliner as it refueled in Gander, N.L., and thought what a strange place his new home was.

From inside the warmth of the Canadian Pacific Airlines' Empress of Honolulu, Xavier and his family had left Barcelona, Spain, to build a new life in a country they knew so little about, his father based expectations on the 1936 Hollywood musical Rose Marie.

To help kick off this travelling series on what our country looked like yesterday, and to ask whether our best year is behind us, I've reached out to a now-grown Xavier.

We're of the same generation and grew up in the same Canada, but his outlook, perhaps similar to many immigrants, is slightly different than mine — but an equally important first chapter of this journey.